I'm not a big fan of television. Not because of your usual tv-rots-your-brain-and-kills-your-imagination snobbishness, mind you. I'm not here to tell you to turn that damned idiot box off and go read a book. No siree. Mine is a different type of snobbishness.
Mostly, TV just plain sucks.
It used to be that it was just average. Shows appealing to the lowest common denominator, consciously staying away from any topic that can ruffle feathers or that require an understanding of things that go beyond the past three or four episodes, formulaically going for the easy laughs that focus groups have told them how to get. Can't entirely blame the producers - they're in it for the money, not some unknown Costarrican's concept of what's great TV or not.
Lately, however, it seems that television has either sunk to heretofore unfathomed depths the like of which would scare the fish food out of Dagon, or become so specialized into trying to reach a single demographic that unless you're part of the very narrowly defined target group, you won't be able to relate at all.
Considering that, it's kind of ironic that I sometimes half-love, half-dread encountering shows like Scrubs, which manages to be smart, funny, and well narrated. I watch them testily at first, unsure of how they're going to proceed, if the great episode I just saw was a fluke, a flash of brilliance designed precisely to lure me in and get me prepped up for the sucker punch of the horrible season that will follow, but eventually I just let go and fall truly, madly, deeply in love with them, the inevitable heartache of the show's decline or cancellation not even a distant shadow in the horizon.
But every so often the stars align, the seas rise, and I find something like HBO's Carnivāle, where in the first 90 seconds of show I fall as madly in love as I did when I first saw the robed apparition materialize out of the shadows in Ladyhawke. It's not only the fact that it pulls a Tarantino and properly use lost or often type-cast greats like Adrienne Barbeau and Clancy Brown, nor the fact that you get the idea that things will fall into place when the story progresses (unlike some other shows that attempt to create mystery by not making any sense).
It's the writing; the way that regardless if Ben Hawkins is the second coming of Christ, it still feels like an ensemble piece; the impeccable production design that adds to the credibility of the environment; and the feeling of inevitability the story has. Things will happen because they have to, but without you seeing the writer's hand crawl into the scene every 10 minutes.
Much like the feeling I got just as Fight Club started, I know this one will come back to haunt me.
Posted by Ricardo at May 31, 2004 01:04 PM